Parliamentary International Forum
The Question of National Unity and Its Implications for Canada's
Foreign Policy
Dinner Seminar:
Monday, March 25, 1996, 6:30 pm.
Room 601, Parliamentary Restaurant, House of Commons, Ottawa
The on-going crisis of national unity has had a disintegrative
effect on the formation and practice of Canadian foreign policy, not
unlike the effect of acid on a healthy organism. This is not to impugn
the motivations of those who seek a radical alteration in the way the
northern half of the continent is organized. But the consequences of
years of constitutional haggling and political gridlock at the highest
levels have been detrimental for Canada's international posture. the
effects have been characterized as follows:
a consistent drain of energy, resources and time away from other areas
of public policy and life, including international affairs;
a reduction in the confidence of friends and allies in Canada's capacity
to deliver or even to survive;
the diminishment of Canada's image as a post-modern and cosmopolitan
example of a multinational, pluralistic state that works; and
the reinforcement of a negative image of Canada as an endlessly indecisive
and contentious polity without strong roots.
As thoughtful and sophisticated an observer as William Pfaff wrote in the
New York Times in 1992:
The majority of modern Canadians seem to have never satisfactorily
settled
in their minds why there should be a Canadian nation. The nation exists
as a result of the Seven Years' War and that war's aftermath in Europe;
the rebellion against the British Crown of the thirteen other North
American colonies of Britain; and the Battle of Vimy Ridge, in the First
World War, when Canadians first fought as Canadians and not as citizens of
individual provinces. But it sometimes seems that the citizens of the
United States believe in Canada's necessity (as a non-United States of
America: evidence of alternative possibility, demonstration of
non-inevitability -- even refuge) more than the Canadians themselves
do.
These views and effects can be questioned and critiqued. The point
of the evening's discussion is to do just that, but also to consider the
repercussions both for Canada and Quebec if the sovereignty option is
eventually successful in future Quebec referendum and, if not, the degree
to which Canada's foreign policy will be influenced regardless.
A final consideration that should also bear on the proceeding is the
extent to which Canada's fate is also being influenced by international
trends. William Thorsell, the editor of The Globe and Mail,
recently wrote: "the course of post-Soviet political history and the
dynamics of modern technology are encouraging neo-nationalism and
decentralization around the world (to the detriment even of the European
Union)."
It has been argued that the world has become a market place of
competing images of the role of the individual and the society as a whole
and the relationship between the two. States which have strong identities
are able to project this image abroad, using it to influence events in
such a way as to protect and further their interest. States which are
internally fragmented and lack a coherent sense of identity will find it
difficult to project a clear and compelling image at all.
Is Canada's future bound by this sort of calculus or is it possible
to continue to demonstrate the non-inevitability even of profound global
trends?
Speakers notes from
forum
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